Once I had asked God for one or two extra inches in height, but instead he made me as tall as the sky, so high that I could not measure myself. So I offered the hundred raakat nafl that I had promised if I grew.~ I AM MALALA

Malala Yousafzai is the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for good reason. Inspired by her passionate educator father and her political hero, Benazir Bhutto, she spoke out as an advocate for millions of education-deprived girls when she knew it could cost her her life. Then she got shot in the head at point-blank range on her school bus. Yet she continued to express her defiance against intellectual oppression from her hospital bed and continues to this day. In my eyes, she is the Nelson Mandela/Martin Luther King of the right to education.

In I Am Malala, you’ll learn why Malala doesn’t wear earrings; what she thought about 9-11; how she treats her impoverished peers; what a “ghost school” is; what she means when she says the music stopped; why Operation Silence and the death of some surprisingly vocal women enraged the Swat Taliban; who Gul Makai and Asia Bibi are; what IDP means; how Malala became friends with former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown; why Birmingham is significant to her (not Alabama, but England); and how Malala and her family survived an earthquake, the biggest exodus in Pashtun history, government corruption, and the attempted-indoctrination of a brain-washing radio dictator, Fazlullah (Fazal Hayat).

Some book reviewers have expressed that they wanted less history and more emotional content. Granted, if you’re looking for all emotion and no history, this book might not be for you. But if you want to learn and be inspired, the backstory will explain how and why so many Pakistani’s came to accept jihad. And you’ll marvel all the more at the extraordinary courage of the story-tellers: 1.) a still-threatened Pakistani school girl who forgave her would-be-assassin and 2.) a busy foreign correspondent who managed to translate the good, the bad, and the ugly of Malala’s complex life to a culturally diverse world in strike-while-the-gun-is-hot hyper speed.

Thank you, Little, Brown and Company, for spreading Malala’s story. I commend you for your courage and vision.

The United Nations designated November 10 Malala Day. Let’s celebrate Malala-style: “Let us pick up our books and our pens. They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.”

We human beings don’t realize how great God is. He has given us an extra extraordinary brain and a sensitive loving heart. He has blessed us with two lips to talk and express our feelings, two eyes which see a world of colors and beauty, two feet which walk on the road of life, two hands to work for us, a nose which smells the beauty of fragrance, and two ears to hear the words of love. As I found with my ear, no one knows how much power they have in their each and every organ until they lose one.~ I Am Malala